Depending on how these have been handled, my reaction has varied from “that’s cool” to “that’s a cynical cash grab.” But 2011 Topps Heritage? It’s an absolute winner, because the approach to the cards and [...]]]> For several years now Topps has released a set it calls Heritage, spotlighting modern players on card designs from the past.

Depending on how these have been handled, my reaction has varied from “that’s cool” to “that’s a cynical cash grab.” But 2011 Topps Heritage? It’s an absolute winner, because the approach to the cards and history — specifically Mets history — is pitch-perfect.

First off, the cards themselves. They’re done in the wood-grain style of the ’62 cards, and produced using plain old cardstock. They aren’t glossy, or festooned with holograms, or otherwise Jetsonized in some unfortunate way. Yes, there are some acknowledgments of the modern age: They have a (subtle) Topps Heritage logo, they say New York Mets® instead of N.Y. Mets, and the backs have a bunch of lawyerese, a web address, and the logos of MLB and the MLBPA instead of the ’nuff-said ©  T. C. G.  P R I N T E D  I N  U. S. A.  of another age. But that’s admissible — when nostalgia won’t be satisfied with anything less than perfect recreation, it’s crossed the line into mania.

The images are great too — they have that simultaneously static yet rich painterly quality of old Topps cards, and the poses are static, not action frames captured with a close-to-lightspeed modern shutter. The backs are wonderfully reproduced, too, with statistics boiled down to a brusque YEAR and LIFE and the little cartoons terrific recreations of a half-century-old style. (If you’re curious why Topps originally opted for YEAR instead of 1961, the answer was so holdover packs of ’62 cards might still sell in ’63.)

But here’s where it starts getting really good. There are 16 Mets in the ’11 Heritage set, plus two Rookie Parade cards featuring Jenrry Mejia and Mike Nickeas (first Met card!) as disembodied heads alongside those of other aspiring pitchers and catchers. Of the 16 Mets, nine are hatless, staring past the camera with the red badges of cap marks on their foreheads and vaguely sheepish expressions. Only one of the guys in a cap is visible to the waist.

The hatless shot is an old Topps standby, taken so a Topps artist could mock up a new uniform (sometimes with comical results) in case of a trade or some other move. There are hatless guys on other teams in ’11 Heritage, but a hasty and admittedly unscientific look around eBay finds many more hatless Mets.

This almost certainly isn’t a mistake or a statistical quirk: It’s Topps knowing its history, and offering an additional homage to 1962. Then, of course, the Mets were a brand-new team, with a dearth of photographs of players in heretofore-unseen blue and orange. Topps had to populate its Mets set with shots of guys in their old uniforms, and that was easiest if hatless shots were used. The ’62 Topps set has 21 guys and three Rookie Parade cards. Of the 21, 16 are hatless, three are wearing hats with the team logos removed, one guy (Al Jackson) wears a Mets hat, and one guy (Ed Bouchee) appears in full uniform. (For the trivia-minded, Don Zimmer wears a Mets hat on a Cin. Reds card, while Bobby Gene Smith wears Mets gear on a Cardinal card, but his cap is angled so you can’t see the NY.)

The percentages aren’t exact, but Topps has got the spirit wonderfully right. After I decided I loved the set, I spent 20 minutes irritably hunting around on eBay and the web looking for the Mets team card. Had Topps forgotten it? No, they hadn’t — I was the forgetful one. The ’62 Mets hadn’t had a team card. And so neither do the ’11 Mets.

Appropriately then, my hat’s off to them.

(Happy aside: The ’11 Heritage set, like us, also lacks Luis Castillo.)

Spring's coming. Promise.

And it has nothing to do with our front office. [...]]]> It’s not yet the Baseball Equinox — though I’m eagerly awaiting word from Greg that we’re finally closer to new baseball than we are to old. But nonetheless, in the last couple of days I’ve felt a quickening somewhere in my blue-and-orange soul.

Spring's coming. Promise.

And it has nothing to do with our front office. Just having Sandy Alderson on the payroll is grounds for celebration, as is having him make smart hires and calmly explain to everybody from Mike Francesa to panicky Mets fans what is and isn’t happening, and that there’s a plan that’s being stuck to. (And hey, getting to talk to the man himself is certainly a welcome new experience.) Still, even the wisest doings of men in jackets and ties can only do so much.

This was different.

And welcome, as I was beginning to worry a bit.

After the 2010 season mercifully expired with Oliver Perez and a bunch of Jerry Manuel Veteran Leaders (TM) taking up space at Citi Field, I didn’t particularly want to think about my misbegotten baseball team for a while. The Giants and Rangers offered a welcome diversion, but then — as always happens — baseball was over and it was winter.

For a while filling my days wasn’t a problem: I was insanely, frighteningly busy in a medium-term freelance gig I’d taken, and I was trying to finish a book that had been squeezed into night-owl hours but whose deadline hadn’t moved. It was about the most tired I’d ever been — I registered the departures of Omar and Jerry and the arrivals of Sandy and J.P. and DePo with what approval I could muster, but mostly I just stayed tired.

And then when I got my breath back a bit, it was clear that the Mets weren’t going to be making big headlines. No Cliff Lees or Zack Greinkes or even Orlando Hudsons were going to be showing up to awkwardly button a jersey over a shirt and tie (seriously, this looks ridiculous) and say can-do things. No, it was Paulino and Carrasco time. I’ve watched the Knicks a bit, with what started as a professional duty turning into a genuine rooting interest. (Perhaps sensing the arrival of a Mets fan, they’ve now stopped winning.) Today I checked in on the Giants, decided to watch them finish off the Eagles, and found myself profoundly grateful that I didn’t really care as Tom Coughlin’s bunch gagged horribly. No offense meant to the Knicks and Giants (or the Jets, Nets, Rangers, Isles, Devils and anybody else), but the more I reallocate my portfolio of Sports Caring, the more I realize that for me there’s baseball and there’s everything else.

So what lifted my spirits? Baseball cards. Yes, in December.

Topps just released 2010 Bowman Draft Picks, news that I greeted with the kind of enthusiasm appropriate for a minor card set purporting to belong to a year that’s over. But then I noticed that Justin Turner had a card — Justin Turner who’d gone into The Holy Books with an evocative but inappropriate Norfolk Tides card from his time as an Oriole. Cool, I thought (becoming one of at least five or six people on the planet to do so), now I have a Justin Turner Mets card.

And hey, Topps made a Matt Harvey card — better get two of those, in case Harvey makes the big club. And ditto for potential future catcher/backup/trade bait/minor-league washout/who? Blake Forsythe. Thinking of Harvey made me think of Alderson’s announcement that the Mets would no longer abide by Bud Selig’s ridiculous slot criteria in the draft. Thinking about Turner made me think about Daniel Murphy and Ruben Tejada and Luis Castillo and Brad Emaus and a second-base competition in Port St. Lucie.

And that was a pure baseball thought — it wasn’t about the front office or cards or payrolls or draft picks. It wasn’t about being mad at Omar Minaya, or wondering about 2012. It was a brief vision of dirt and grass and sunshine, the pops of balls in gloves and the thunk of spring-training contact before little crowds.

Not so far away, I thought. And then, finally: That will be nice.

Horizontal cards are weird because approximately 98.8% of their peers are vertical, but they can be beauties, too. In honor of the release of this year’s The Holy Books collection, I present, as captured on the cordoned-off walls of the Empire level at Citi Field last August, what I [...]]]>

A pretty darn good pitcher? Yes!

Horizontal cards are weird because approximately 98.8% of their peers are vertical, but they can be beauties, too. In honor of the release of this year’s The Holy Books collection, I present, as captured on the cordoned-off walls of the Empire level at Citi Field last August, what I believe is my partner’s favorite card of all time, the 1974 Jon Matlack. I asked him once and I think this was the answer…and if it wasn’t, there are worse things to look at in the middle of November.

Jon Matlack was a great pitcher, not incidentally. I’m so Jonned up over him, in fact, I think I’ll reprint what I wrote about when I declared him the No. 39 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years:

Mystery guest, please sign in.

OK, let’s get started.

Is your middle name Trumpbour?

Yes.

Were you the second Met to win Rookie of the Year?

Yes.

Were you named to the National League All-Star team thrice?

Yes.

Did you get the win in one of those games?

Yes.

In your first five full seasons, did your record 75 victories?

Yes.

Was that the most any Met not named Seaver or Gooden ever totaled in his first five seasons?

Yes.

Was your ERA for those five years a mere 2.84?

Yes.

With the Mets trying to win a division in a five-team scramble on what was supposed to be the final day of the regular season, did you strike out nine Cubs in eight innings?

Yes.

Did you wind up losing that game 1-0 on a run scratched out in the eighth?

Yes.

Was this kind of run-support typical of what you received while you were a Met?

Yes.

Was the only game you pitched in a playoff series a two-hit shutout against one of the greatest-hitting teams of all time?

Yes.

Were those two hits collected by Andy Kosco?

Yes.

Not Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez or Johnny Bench, but Andy Kosco?

Yes.

Did you start three games in the ensuing World Series against another historically great team?

Yes.

Did you yield no earned runs in 14 innings over those first two starts?

Yes.

Did you pitch two more shutout innings in Game Seven before running out of gas in the third?

Yes.

Would have you avoided that situation had Yogi Berra pitched George Stone in Game Six, thereby saving Seaver for Game Seven?

Yes.

But you took the ball?

Yes.

And did you come that far in 1973 despite Marty Perez of the Braves whacking a liner off your head and fracturing your skull?

Yes.

Yet were you back pitching eleven days later?

Yes.

On June 29, 1974, did you pitch a one-hitter against the Cardinals at Shea Stadium?

Yes.

Was it the first win ever witnessed in person by at least one eleven-year-old Mets fan?

Yes.

Shouldn’t you be mentioned more often as one of the best pitchers the Mets ever had?

You tell me.

After a month of insanity (finishing a Star Wars book, grueling new freelance gig), I can finally think once again about my beloved New York Mets. (Nod to the beyond-awesome Citi ad set in Istanbul.) So let me sally forth by looking back — and giving a slightly overdue welcome to the [...]]]> Yoo-hoo? Anybody miss me?

After a month of insanity (finishing a Star Wars book, grueling new freelance gig), I can finally think once again about my beloved New York Mets. (Nod to the beyond-awesome Citi ad set in Istanbul.) So let me sally forth by looking back — and giving a slightly overdue welcome to the THB Class of 2010. (Previous annals here, here, here, here and here.)

Here’s a recap for newcomers: I have a pair of binders, dubbed The Holy Books (THB) by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. (News flash: Binder #2 is now full. The Alderson Era will be a fresh start in more ways than you thought.) The binders are ordered by year, with a card for each player who made his Met debut that year: Tom Seaver is Class of ’67, Mike Piazza is Class of ’98, Jose Reyes is Class of ’03, etc. There are extra pages for the rosters of the two World Series winners, including managers, and one for the 1961 Expansion Draft. That includes the infamous Lee Walls, the only THB resident who neither played for nor managed the Mets.

Welcome, new boys!

If a player gets a Topps card as a Met, I use that unless it’s truly horrible — Topps was here a decade before there were Mets, so they get to be the card of record. No Met Topps card? Then I look for a Bisons card, a non-Topps Met card, a Topps non-Met card, or anything else. Topps had a baseball-card monopoly until 1981, and minor-league cards only really began in the mid-1970s, so cup-of-coffee guys from before ’75 or so are a problem. Companies like TCMA and Renata Galasso made odd sets with players from the 1960s — the likes of Jim Bethke, Bob Moorhead and Dave Eilers are immortalized through their efforts. And a card dealer named Larry Fritsch put out sets of “One Year Winners” spotlighting blink-and-you-missed-them guys such as Ted Schreiber and Joe Moock. (A new wrinkle: Topps has recently been selling off its stock of old photos, including ones of guys who never got proper cards. I was outbid for the Ted Schreiber, to my moderate but slowly escalating annoyance.)

Then there are the legendary Lost Nine — guys who never got a regulation-sized, acceptable card from anybody. Brian Ostrosser got a 1975 minor-league card that looks like a bad Xerox. Leon Brown has a terrible 1975 minor-league card and an oversized Omaha Royals card put out as a promotional set by the police department. Tommy Moore got a 1990 Senior League card as a 42-year-old with the Bradenton Explorers. Then there are Al Schmelz, Francisco Estrada, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Greg Harts and Rich Puig, who have no cards whatsoever — the oddball 1991 Nobody Beats the Wiz set is too undersized to work. Best I can tell, Al Schmelz never even had a decent color photograph taken while wearing his Met uniform. (Here’s a crappy black-and-white photo I felt compelled to buy.) The Lost Nine are represented in THB by DIY cards I Photoshopped and had printed on cardstock, because I am insane.

During the season I scrutinize new card sets in hopes of finding a) better cards of established Mets; b) cards to stockpile for prospects who might make the Show; and most importantly c) a card for each new big-league Met. At season’s end, the new guys get added to the binders, to be studied now and then until February. When it’s time to pull old Topps cards of the spring-training invitees and start the cycle again.

Anyway, here they are, the final class of the already unbeloved Minaya regime:

Manny Acosta: Lanky reliever threw hard, but had problems hitting the plate and with dinger-related neck strain. This description suffices for approximately 73,541 relievers in baseball history. If not for having surrendered a couple of huge hits in big spots, I’d probably think of him more fondly. But he did and so I don’t.  Manny gets a mock Topps ’52 card from a few years ago, on which he’s depicted as a Brave.

Joaquin Arias: Stats-minded Mets fans appreciated Arias for not being Jeff Francoeur, but I thought the Mets deserved praise for a different reason: It looked as if the Rangers organization had denied Arias food in Oklahoma City, which is mean. Seriously, the guy made post-Marines Buddy Harrelson look like an offensive lineman. Has since been waived, and possibly is being hand-fed gruel by Sally Struthers as you read this.  Topps ’52 card as a Ranger.

Rod Barajas: Seemed like a fine acquisition when he was slugging clutch home runs, not so much when it became obvious that nobody had told him that Ball 4 = First Base. Still, a decent sort who was an interesting interview and kept the catcher’s seat warm for Josh Thole, whom the Mets didn’t hold back because someone with Veteran Leadership TM was on the roster. So no particular harm, no particular foul. Barajas got a Topps Update card as a Met, despite spending the last six weeks of the season employed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. While we’re on the subject, Alex Cora got a Mets Topps Update card despite being released two weeks before Barajas left town. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated that 2010 was the first year in three decades in which Topps was given a monopoly on major-league baseball cards. Competition, kids! It makes products better!

Jason Bay: Sitting in the stands at Citi, I noticed Jason Bay’s at-bat music — an odd, off-kilter riff leading into a metalesque singer who sounded a bit like David Lee Roth. To my surprise, the song was by Pearl Jam, which has always been a band I admire rather than like. Anyway, “The Fixer” became a favorite of mine, and I rehearsed a blog post in which I’d talk about the song and weave in its lyrics — which are about redemption and taking a problem on your shoulders and making things better — with an account of a big Jason Bay hit. All I needed was the big Jason Bay hit. Topps Update card.

Henry Blanco: Tattooed, imposing catcher did about all you could ask from a back-up catcher. Really good back-up catchers are like pleasant laundry rooms — they’re a nice thing to find in a house, but nobody’s ever stalked away from a showing because the laundry room was lacking. I’d call Henry Blanco a stacked washer-dryer with a sufficient supply of off-brand dryer sheets and maybe a plastic laundry basket that’s a no-longer-fashionable color but still serviceable. Blanco got a Topps Update card, which must make back-up catchers in Pittsburgh or Houston mad.

Chris Carter: The Animal was amusingly intense, got some big hits, and was also a welcome antidote to the assumption that baseball players’ mental activity away from the stadium pretty much consists of thinking about hitting baseballs. Carter went to Stanford, where he got a degree in human biology — in three years. He’s interested in things such as the dedifferentation of blood cells, stem-cell research and cloning. What does Carter get for this doubly impressive resume? A lousy Buffalo Bisons card — and it’s a dreaded horizontal to boot.

Frank Catalanotto: Catalanotto was given the heave-ho after showing very little as a pinch-hitter early in the year, which wasn’t particularly fair but is how things work: Pinch-hitters, like middle relievers, wind up unemployed if one of their bad stretches happens to come at the start of their tenure. Topps showed they were paying at least fitful attention by not giving him a Mets card seven months later, leaving THB to content itself with last year’s update card, on which he is a  Brewer.

Ike Davis: Oh, Ike. Tall, outwardly amiable, and looked like an overgrown Nadia Comaneci with a dugout railing at hand. Ike swiftly displaced Mike Jacobs — part of the ample evidence in the case of Fans v. Omar Minaya — in the lineup and gained a spot in our hearts. He hit tape-measure home runs, he had some idea of the strike zone, and he was wonderfully sure-handed at first base. (He should’ve won a Gold Glove except for the award being a stupid popularity contest.) Best of all, he suffered through a rough early summer and then had a pretty fine September, which bodes well for future years. Topps snuck in a short-printed Series 2 of Ike after he’d been crowned with a shaving-cream pie, which I refused to buy because a) it was expensive and b) that kind of card is a Yankee thing. His Topps Update card will do just fine.

R.A. Dickey: Exhibit A in the half-hearted case made by the defense in Fans v. Omar Minaya. Dickey was one of the finest stories to come around these parts in years: a fireballer who got jobbed out of most of his signing bonus for the sin of being born without an ulnar collateral ligament, had to reinvent himself as a knuckleballer and somehow made it work. The Mets had never had a knuckleballer of any merit, but Dickey proved he was no novelty act: He was a student of pitching, a terrific fielder and a pretty fair hitter to boot. Plus he spoke like a character from a W.P. Kinsella story. Baseball players like this typically only exist in novels and overheated blog posts, but every time we pinched ourselves, Dickey was still there. His lone card is a Buffalo horizontal, a Topps oversight that upset me to an unhealthy degree.

Lucas Duda: With his huge frame, vaguely smash-faced visage and lumbering strides in left field, Duda looked like an 1990s Milwaukee Brewer or the understudy for Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” And during September his brand-new career took a decidedly tragic turn — he collected his first hit in Chicago and then went so cold that you wondered if he’d ever get another one. He was 1 for 34, and you wanted to time your bathroom trips for his at-bats, not because you were mad at him but because his struggles were so pitiful that it felt cruel to watch. But Duda then broke out of it with a monstrous home run and went on an honest-to-goodness tear, hitting tracers out of Citi Field. Far too much baseball writing attributes getting a hit to character (or not getting one to a lack of it), but being 1 for 34 in the big leagues and staying even-keeled really does seems indicative of some measure of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever hear from Lucas Duda again, but I’ll remember the story of his September for some time. He gets a horrible 2008 Bowman Chrome card for now; here’s hoping for an upgrade down the line.

Jesus Feliciano: Feliciano toiled in the minor leagues for 13 seasons before finally getting his chance at the age of 31. That’s a lot of time staring at the ceiling of cheap motels and riding around on crappy buses in pursuit of a dream that must have come to seem like it wasn’t going to come true. It’s great that it did. All that makes me feel shrivel-hearted and small-souled for now pointing out that Jesus Feliciano wasn’t really very good. Topps Update card.

Dillon Gee: If you circled Dillon Gee’s big-league debut in Washington in red pen, you probably have the same last name as him. (And this is coming from a guy who drove from D.C. to Philly to see the Mets take the wraps off Bobby Jones.) But Gee took a no-hitter into the sixth in his debut and didn’t even get accused of not caring about injured veterans later. He pitched pretty well, all told, for the rest of the year — certainly well enough to merit a 2011 look. Gee is one of those guys who has to have very good location and command all his pitches to succeed, and guys like that generally sit at the back end of rotations and get hit. But sometimes they don’t: It’s overly optimistic assuming every change speeds/hit spots guy can be Greg Maddux or even Rick Reed, but it’s overly pessimistic to dismiss the idea that a guy like that has no chance. Got a 2010 Bowman card.

Luis Hernandez: Hit a home run with a broken toe, which is pretty impressive. Beyond that, I have trouble remembering much of anything he did beyond Not Being Luis Castillo. We can do better than that from now on, right Mr. Alderson? Depressing Factoid: Luis’s homer was the only one hit by a Mets second baseman in 2010. Yipes. His card is a Topps ’52 style Oriole. There were a bunch of those this year for some reason.

Mike Hessman: Late in 2010 I was trying to explain the concept of “Quadruple-A player” to my son. Once I used Hessman as an example he got it instantly. Represented by a Topps Pro Debut card.

Ryota Igarashi: Nicknamed Rocket Boy. Rockets that miss with the depressing frequency shown by Igarashi are generally destroyed remotely from the control room. Got a two-year deal, while Hisanori Takahashi got a chance to walk after one campaign. Good job, Omar! Represented by a 2008 Baseball Magazine Japanese card on which he is a Yakult Swallow.

Jenrry Mejia: There was Gary Matthews Jr. in center, Mike Jacobs at first, the stubborn insistence that John Maine and Oliver Perez would be just fine, and the continuing presence of Luis Castillo. But what really got the torch-bearing mob advancing on Castle Omar was sacrificing a year of the fireballing Mejia’s development while wasting him as a middle reliever. I’m annoyed all over again just thinking about it. Here’s hoping young Jenrry has a career good enough that I eventually think of him without automatically also thinking of Met front-office stupidity. Got a Topps Series 2 card that I’d be happier never to have seen, given why it existed.

Mike Nickeas: Minor-league journeyman makes average. His father sort of played for Liverpool. Got a 2005 Bowman Draft Picks card in which he was a Ranger. Curious amount of Mets-Rangers traffic this season.

Hisanori Takahashi: Wily, brave Japanese veteran who pitched capably as a middle reliever, starter and emergency closer. Headed elsewhere in 2011 after seeking what I’ll admit seemed like a lot of years to commit to a pretty old pitcher. We’ll miss him whenever Igarashi gives up a double in the gap or K-Rod punches a relative. Didn’t get a Topps Update card, but did get a  Topps Chrome card. Damn it, Topps.

Ruben Tejada: Slick-fielding second baseman clearly wasn’t ready with the bat, but survived a grueling season and the existence of Jerry Manuel to put up encouraging numbers in September. His soft hands and precocious baseball instincts were a joy to watch, but one has to be realistic about that bat. Got a Topps Series 2 card.

Justin Turner: Showed flashes in a brief midsummer callup, but didn’t return in September. Given the collective wattage of the Mets braintrust in 2010, it’s possible they forgot he existed. (Reading this, Nick Evans squeezes the mouse too hard and breaks it.) Can we take another moment to sing hallelujahs that people with functioning cerebellums now run our club? Has a card as a 2009 Tide, which continues to startle me even though I know perfectly well the Tides were an Orioles farm team by then.

Raul Valdes: The definition of warm body. Has a 2006 Bowman card on which he’s a Cub and his name is spelled “Valdez.” This undoubtedly strikes him as more of an injustice than it does me.

Near the end of winter my neighbor’s younger brother died unexpectedly. Emily and I are friendly with our neighbor, and offered him our condolences. But we don’t really know each other, for all the usual city reasons that you regret on one level but mostly look past while you’re [...]]]> Update: Here’s this story revisited for NPR.

Near the end of winter my neighbor’s younger brother died unexpectedly. Emily and I are friendly with our neighbor, and offered him our condolences. But we don’t really know each other, for all the usual city reasons that you regret on one level but mostly look past while you’re busy being busy.

On Sunday I was walking through the neighborhood when I came across my neighbor rolling a luggage cart piled with stacked bags and boxes. I waved, and he stopped me.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” he said. “You’re a baseball fan, right?”

He’d just finished the unhappy business of cleaning out his brother’s apartment. A lot of stuff had gone to the charity shop, but there were some things he hadn’t wanted to just hand over. He said his brother had been a baseball fan and had kept some things, which he didn’t know what to do with.

Standing there on the street, my neighbor drew out one of the bags from the stack on the luggage cart and opened it. Inside was a stack of yearbooks. The 1961 Yankees were on top. Farther down in the stack I saw the Jets logo, and then a familiar sight: Tom Seaver smiling behind assembled baseballs. Mets, 1975. Then a Seventies Yankee, swinger’s locks flying, about to crash into a catcher at home plate. Then Mr. Met in a tri-cornered hat. 1976 — I’d had that yearbook, when I was a kid.

My neighbor explained that he hadn’t wanted to leave the baseball stuff to be thrown out or sold to just anybody. He wasn’t interested in getting money for it, but he did want it to go to someone who would appreciate it. He looked harried, but mostly sad: He knew there were people out there who would love this stuff, but he didn’t know how to find them.

“I can help you with that,” I said.

So later that afternoon I stood in my neighbor’s apartment, looking at a daybed covered with a stack of baseball books and four boxes — his brother’s baseball collection. The books tended toward big volumes celebrating the game’s history — the kind of lavish coffee-table things I’m always tempted by in bookstores. They looked brand-new. A big box held a stack of games by Cadaco, a company I’d never heard of. The games were some variant of Strat-o-Matic, from the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Another box held the yearbooks. And then there were two shoeboxes. My neighbor said those were full of baseball cards, and I could have them if I wanted them.

I told him I’d take the collection and look through it. Some of it might be pretty valuable, I said, adding that I’d set that stuff aside so he could figure out what to do with it. The things that weren’t so valuable I’d find homes for. The books, for instance, would be a great baseball introduction for Joshua, a way for him to quietly read and soak up knowledge and backstory on his time, arming himself with tales of Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and Frank Robinson. That’s how I’d caught up with the adult baseball fans in my life, spending evenings and car rides reading “Strange But True Baseball Stories” and hagiographies of vanished stars and chronicles of long-ago seasons.

We ferried the stuff down to my apartment. I sorted through the baseball books, putting some in the upstairs bookcase and some in Joshua’s room for him to discover. I put the mysterious games in the closet for closer scrutiny some other time. I looked through the yearbooks (they turned out not to be worth as much as I’d thought), pondering who might like them. There wasn’t a yearbook newer than 1980, though there were copies of Street and Smith’s annuals from 1985 and 1986. The newer stuff was pristine, almost as if it hadn’t been read. The older stuff showed its wear — it had been well-kept, but obviously read quite a bit.

And then I turned to the shoeboxes. These weren’t the long white boxes that card collectors use these days, but honest-to-goodness shoeboxes bearing the logos of old brands: Thom McAn and Walk-Over. 9 1/2. They would have fit me, I thought idly.

I opened the first one. There were cards stacked this way and that, and I suddenly remembered something I’d known as a child: Despite their place in Americana, shoeboxes aren’t a great fit for baseball cards, as long rows of cards don’t completely fill up the box, leaving it vulnerable to flexing. This box was tightly and carefully packed, with no wasted space. The second shoebox was the same way, but there was a baseball nestled among the cards. I eased it free and saw a signature on it, one I knew.

BABE RUTH

Wow, I thought. Then realized: No. It was a stamp. Next to the Babe’s signature was a stamp of Hank Aaron’s. The ball was white, but you could feel its age: It had gone hard as stone.

I put the souvenir ball aside and took out stacks of cards, arranging them on my dining-room table. There were hundreds of 1974s, with chevrons top and bottom. The corners were tight and perfect. I realized I wasn’t used to seeing old cards like this, as pristine cardboard rectangles. Mixed in with them were dozens of gaudy 1972s, with their Pop-Art colors and 3-D stars, a handful of 1975s, and ranks of dour, almost-military white 1973s. Then there were lots and lots of silver-gray 1970s, the last Topps cards to bear painterly portraits.

I started sorting the cards, at first idly, then methodically. There were few if any doubles from the 1972s and 1973s and 1975s. For the other two years there were lots — the stacks of doubles quickly topped 50, then 100. My neighbor’s brother had all but cornered the market on 1974 traded cards of Steve Stone, and the cards practically sang with a frustration I recalled: In 1976, the first year I’d collected, I’d been a magnet for traded cards of Mike Anderson.

The 1970s were in good shape, but not collector-quality. A lot of the corners were rounded, and some cards had been written on. Same with the 72s: Many had positions added on the front in pen. The 74s, on the other hand, were marred only by the occasional faintly burred front or discolored back. I remembered what caused those patterns. In a wax pack, the rectangle of dry pink gum was bound against the front of the first card, and adhesive often got on the back of the last card.

My neighbor’s brother had been born eight years before me. Looking over his cards, I did the math. He’d been nine when he collected those 1970s, and 14 when he bought a few 75s. I’d started collecting in 1976, when I was seven, and quit (the first time) in 1981, when I was 12. The ages were different, but the age range was the same. And so was the pattern of wear. I’d played with my 1976s endlessly, and today they’re almost round. My 1981 cards? They were put away basically untouched.

I kept looking for signs of order as I sorted the cards, but there weren’t any. Well, except for one thing: I wasn’t finding star cards or valuable rookies. Until, in the middle of the second box, I came to a 1970 Willie McCovey. Next was a 1972 Willie Mays (with CF added in ballpoint pen). I wasn’t surprised by what followed: Dave Winfields, Nolan Ryans, a Mike Schmidt, Tom Seavers, Joe Morgan, Harmon Killebrews, Pete Rose, Rollie Fingers. At some point (around 1980, by the evidence) my neighbor’s brother had taken down those shoeboxes and searched for stars. I suspect he sold, traded or gave some away — there were fewer valuable cards than chance would dictate, and no 1971s — and then put the rest back, where they sat undisturbed for another 30 years.

And there was one other, much subtler sign of order.

Looking through the 1970s, I found this sequence: Rod Gaspar (Mets), Bob Aspromonte (Braves), Jose Cardenal (Cardinals), Dave Marshall (Giants), Larry Stahl (Padres), Joe Foy (Mets), Sandy Alomar (Angels), Calvin Koonce (Mets), Bill Dillman (Cardinals), Ron Herbel (Padres), Dick Selma (Phillies).

That is not a random grouping: All of those guys were Mets at some point, except Dillman. I looked up Bill Dillman. He was a member of the 1972 Tidewater Tides.

My neighbor’s brother was a Mets fan — and not a casual one, either. He knew Larry Stahl and Ron Herbel had worn blue and orange even if they’d never had Mets cards, and he knew that Bill Dillman hadn’t quite earned a ticket back to the Show as a member of the Mets organization. He’d collected cards for a while, then put them aside, their apparent randomness hiding patterns that the right person would be able to read. Someone who knew not just baseball cards, but also obscure Mets. Someone like me.

Looking at those cards, I knew he’d loved the same team I do, and I could see how his mind had worked. I sorted his cards carefully, separating them into years and doubles. I put aside the small stack of valuable cards for my neighbor to consider. I checked to see if the cards of Mets and guys who’d been Mets were in better shape than my own, swapping mine for his when they were. I put aside the partial sets of 1970s and 1974s I’d reconstructed. And then I sat at the table pondering homes for yearbooks and thinking about baseball fans I knew who would see a packet of random 30-year-old Cardinals or Yankees or Expos as a welcome gift, worth pondering at odd moments or kept to be passed on to someone else who would appreciate them.

I never knew my neighbor’s brother, but I think he would like that.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue arrives in my mailbox every February to no particular anticipation or fanfare. Certainly its contents are well put together, and I wouldn’t argue they don’t merit an objective hubba-hubba! and a [...]]]> Anyone who knows Dan Quayle knows that, given a choice between golf and sex, he’ll choose golf every time.
—Marilyn Quayle

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue arrives in my mailbox every February to no particular anticipation or fanfare. Certainly its contents are well put together, and I wouldn’t argue they don’t merit an objective hubba-hubba! and a few wolf whistles from those given over to such expressions of approval. Yet I find the Swimsuit Issue disappointing these days because it’s a copy of Sports Illustrated that ain’t got no sports in it.

I’m not kidding. I like sports. I like other things, too, but I don’t like my sports magazines to be scantily clad when it comes to what they usually cover.

Newsstand and ad sales indicate, however, that the Swimsuit Issue is greeted with what might be called broad-based enthusiasm by its reading public, no matter how little there is to read beyond the captions of where the swimsuit models are being languid and who manufactured what little they’re wearing. Indeed, SI hit upon a goldmine when it figured out swimsuit modeling, particularly in the dead of winter and after the Super Bowl, makes for excellent Illustrated, lack of Sports notwithstanding.

Whichever way you wish to classify it, they do a nice job at displaying the merchandise (the swimsuits, I mean). Even if it’s a Brooklyn Decker on the front instead of a Brooklyn Dodger — which had to disappoint Fred Wilpon when he took a second glance at the cover lines — one has to appreciate the photography, the fashion, the artistry…the whatever you like to appreciate.

Even if it ain’t got no sports. Which is what I like in my sports magazines.

Still, I’ve maintained one particularly pleasant memory of a Swimsuit Issue from years gone by. OK, I have a few — I’m not completely made of cork, rubber, wool and stitched white cowhide, y’know — but one edition above the rest stands out: February 9, 1987. Elle MacPherson was on the cover, taking “a dip in the Dominican Republic,” which was as fine as it was dandy, but that’s not the memorable part. It was a two-page spread, shot in the same Caribbean country, described as such:

Kathy and Monika, who waits to bat, are a hit with the Cedeño team, in uniforms by H₂0 ($72).

I don’t mind telling you that this was a pretty hot picture. Kathy is Kathy Ireland, who was to supermodeling back then what Doc Gooden was to pitching, and you know what she’s wearing besides that “uniform”?

Same thing Doc wore when he was on the cover of SI: a Mets cap.

Now who’s saying Hubba-Hubba?

What made this tableau particularly attractive was the reason Kathy was topped off so stylishly. In the winter of 1987, if you’re posing a model in a baseball motif, you know the ensemble is not complete without royal blue millinery accented by a splash of orange. Baseball, in the winter of 1987, following the fall of 1986, equals Mets.

World Champion New York Mets, if you want to be a model of accuracy.

You’ve got a supermodel? You can’t have her modeling the colors of anything less than a super team. No team loomed as more super or superb at that moment in time than the Mets. It would have been a fashion faux pas to have her in anything less (not that Miss Ireland could have been wearing much less).

Monika, incidentally, is Monika Schnarre; she’s waiting her turn in a Red Sox cap — a perfect pecking order in the wake of ’86.

Kathy Ireland in a Mets cap? With defending champion Pitchers & Catchers barely two weeks away? Suddenly the dead of winter was indisputably springing to life in early February of 1987.

Yes, this is clearly the best illustration in the history of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues, which, back then, weren’t standalones. They had some actual sports in the pages that came after the modeling, which is significant for our purposes as Mets fans because of the sentence that followed the plug for Kathy’s and Monika’s swimsuit designer.

Turn the page for more on the Dominican Republic’s favorite sport.

At si.com/vault, you can actually virtually turn the page of any Sports Illustrated issue, so I took the advice from the spread of pages 150-151 and did what the magazine suggested 23 years ago. And I came upon a story I vaguely recalled but, for some reason, not as vividly as I recalled Kathy Ireland in a Mets cap.

The article is headlined “Standing Tall at Short,” and is written by Steve Wulf. As long as SI was headed to the Dominican to take advantage of its “lush setting” for shooting models, they decided to explore its other great natural resource: shortstops.

There was a point back in the mid- to late ’80s when it seemed every shortstop under the sun hailed from the Dominican Republic. On April 27, 1986, Wulf wrote, nine different Dominicanos played short in the big leagues. One, Rafael Santana, was doing so for the Mets. Two others, Tony Fernandez of the Blue Jays and Julio Franco of the Indians, would eventually become Mets

“Nosotros somos la Tierra de Mediocampistas,” says Felix Acosta Nunez, the sports editor of Santo Domingo’s Listin Diario. “We are the Land of Shortstops.”

Sadly, the setting for those Dominican youths who grew up to play in the majors wasn’t anything close to lush. From Wulf:

In the Dominican Republic, where the average family income is $1,200 a year, poverty is not an isolated problem; it’s the way of life. Also, the quality of education is very low, lower than in the Caribbean’s other pools of baseball talent, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. So the kids don’t stay in school, not when they can be out on the streets or in the fields playing baseball. “It’s very much like the United States in the ’30s, during the Depression,” says Art Stewart, director of scouting for the Kansas City Royals.  ”Those were sad times, but they produced great ballplayers because baseball was one of the only avenues of escape.”

Talent plus motivation equaled a plethora of shortstops, particularly the San Pedro de Macoris region, from whence seven 1986 major league shortstops hailed. It was a curiosity, all right, but there was more to the story than the trivia of so many players playing the same position from the same relatively obscure area. The men who made the majors — several of whom Wulf gathered for a shortstop summit — provided baseball equipment and hope for the kids who would come up behind them. Alas, there wasn’t always enough of either. “The players who have made it in the big leagues generously buy gear for the kids, but there is never enough to go around,” Wulf writes. “Too often the youngsters must make do with a glove fashioned from a milk carton, a ball that is a sewed-up sock and a bat made from a guava tree limb.”

From left to right in the above photo, we meet the cream of the ’86-’87 Dominican shorstop crop: Alfredo Griffin, Julio Franco, Rafael Santana, Tony Fernandez, Mariano Duncan and Jose Uribe. Santana was hardly the star of this Dominican shortstop class; that distinction belonged to Fernandez (whose game mysteriously flickered during his abbreviated 1993 Met tenure). But Ralphie, as his teammates used to call him, shines in the story, nonetheless, quite befitting his status as a World Champion New York Met.

Though he was never considered on the same lofty level with his fellow Dominican shortstops (or ’86 teammates), Wulf describes La Romana native Santana — “the only one with a World Series ring” — glowingly in his piece. He’s the man who “paid [his dues] the longest,” stuck first in the Yankee farm system, then the Cardinals’, where Ozzie Smith left everybody waiting. “Playing in the minors for so long taught me patience,” Santana told Wulf.

You can see the patience in the way he plays shortstop, the way he makes every play close. The Mets finally turned to him in the middle of the ’84 season, and he has been their starter ever since.

Rafael lasted only one more season as a Met. The organization was high on Kevin Elster and traded the incumbent shortstop after 1987. Santana was steady defensively if indifferent offensively. Demographically, though, he was a sign of shortstops to come. According to Ultimate Mets Database, fifteen of the 107 Mets to play shortstop through 2009 were from the Dominican Republic — nearly 14%. Eleven of them were Santana’s successors.

The most famous and accomplished of them as a Met, at least individually considering he doesn’t yet have a World Series ring, is Villa Gonzalez’s Jose Reyes, hopefully back in the saddle on Opening Day 2010. San Cristobal’s Jose Vizcaino held down the position effectively for a couple of years in the mid-’90s. The rest didn’t necessarily distinguish themselves as Met shortstops.

Chronologically, they were:

• Junior Noboa (1992)
• Tony Fernandez (1993)
• Manny Alexander (1997)
• Wilson Delgado (2004)
• Anderson Hernandez (2005-07, ’09)
• Argenis Reyes (2008-09)
• Fernando Tatis (2009…a pair of emergency cameos)
• Wilson Valdez (2009)
• Angel Berroa (2009)

Before Santana? It had been three years since a Dominican played short for the Mets when Rafael joined the club in ’84. His most direct predecessor was Frank Taveras of Las Matas de Santa Cru. Taveras manned short, not always brilliantly, from ’79 to ’81. Frankie’s stock-in-trade was base-stealing. He set the pre-Mookie single-season record with 42 bags in 1979, despite playing the first two weeks of that year with the Pirates (who — perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not — went on to win the World Series without him). Before Taveras, the most recent Dominican shortstop on the Mets was Barahona-born utilityman deluxe Teddy Martinez, who played six positions in five Met seasons. As the Super Joe McEwing of his day, Ted filled in often at short during Buddy Harrelson’s various injuries in 1973′s pennant campaign.

Prior to Martinez’s 1970-74 stint, there was only one Dominican who played shortstop for the Mets. In fact, he was the first Dominican Met — and the first Dominican shortstop in the majors. I would not have known about him had I not been staring (in disappointment that it ain’t got no sports, I swear) at Brooklyn Decker’s Sports Illustrated cover earlier this week. If I hadn’t seen Brooklyn, I wouldn’t have thought to look for Kathy Ireland in a Mets cap. If I hadn’t tracked Kathy’s picture down, I wouldn’t have revisited Steve Wulf’s profile of Rafael Santana and his contemporaries. And if Wulf hadn’t drawn me in to his tale of San Pedro de Macoris, I wouldn’t have suddenly become aware of the contribution of Amado “Sammy” Samuel to baseball history.

Amazingly, even in the baseball-mad precincts of San Pedro de Macoris in 1987, Samuel was a bit of a prophet without honor. The locals, Wulf reported, thought outfielder Rico Carty was the first Macorista to make the major. Not so — Sammy got to the Braves ahead of him in 1962. Even Wulf concedes his discovery of “the very first Dominican shortstop to reach the big leagues” could be considered underwhelming.

It’s not hard to overlook Amado Samuel. He played in only 144 major league games over three seasons for the Braves and New York Mets, batting .215 with three home runs and not one stolen base. About the only time his name comes up is when some publication lists the 78 men who have played third base for the Mets. Even the Dominican aficionados have lost track of him; some say he is living in New York City, others say he is in Santo Domingo, still others think he has passed away.

Turns out those folks were wrong. Sammy made Louisville his home from the time he played there in the minors in 1961. He married a Louisville lady, picked up a southern accent and went to work after he was done playing ball at the General Electric plant. “I didn’t play too long after the Mets ’cause I tore up my knee in Buffalo,” Samuel, then 48, told Wulf. “Missed out on the big bucks, I guess, but I’m healthy, doing fine, no complaints.” Not only no complaints, but some justifiable pride:

“Now that you ask, I am proud of being the majors’ first Dominican shortstop. I guess there are a lot of them now. You know, one reason there might be so many is the ground they play on. You’ve got to have very good hands to play on those fields.”

About the only thing I knew about Sammy Samuel before Steve Wulf (and Brooklyn Decker, indirectly) got me up to speed was his nickname. I only knew that because my friend Joe Dubin sent me a recording of the first radio broadcast in Shea Stadium history, and Bob Murphy referred to the Mets’ starting shortstop that momentous day as Sammy, not Amado. Murph, Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson were preoccupied by the wonders of freshly opened Shea to spend a lot of time relating Sammy’s story to their audience on April 17, 1964. Ralph, however, had the privilege of calling the first multiple-run, extra-base hit in Shea Stadium history in the fourth inning this way:

“And SAMUEL has put the Mets out in front! Sammy Samuel with a sharp line drive right over the bag that hit in fair territory, right down the left field line.”

Sammy, who wound up on second, drove in Jesse Gonder and Frank Thomas (despite Thomas falling down en route to home). It put the Mets up 3-1 on Bob Friend and the Bucs. It wouldn’t get any better for the Mets that day. They’d lose 4-3 to Pittsburgh.

It wouldn’t get much better for Samuel as Met, either. Despite the two ribbies and a batting average of .364 after three games, Casey Stengel sent Ed Kranepool up to pinch-hit for him in the eighth. Sammy was never quite the same after that. The first shortstop Shea ever saw watched his offense plummet. Within a few weeks of Shea’s opener, Samuel’s average was down below .200. On a team that wasn’t going anyplace but tenth, Sammy’s spot was soon enough on the bench. Eventually, right after Shea hosted its only All-Star Game, it was Buffalo, then (as now) the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate. He never made it back to Flushing.

Amado Samuel was in on some Met history besides his Opening Day onslaught. He came on for defense, replacing Roy McMillan, after the Mets opened a 13-1 lead on the Cubs at Wrigley on May 26, a game that we would hold on to win 19-1. From it was born the legend of the phone call to the newspaper sports desk:

“How’d the Mets do today?”
“They scored 19 runs.”
“Did they win?”

It was 1964. It wasn’t out of line to ask the followup.

Sammy went 0-for-1 in Chicago that day. His next appearance, May 31 at Shea, would net him two hits and a hit-by-pitch, which sounds like a splendid day’s work…except he had seven at-bats…and the game went 23 innings…and the Mets lost 8-6 in the second game of a doubleheader to the Giants…with Sammy flying to right to end it…after losing the first game 5-3. Sammy played second base from the third (Casey had pinch-hit for starter Rod Kanehl in an effort to score early) through the 23rd.

Starting at third base in the opener of another Sunday Shea doubleheader three weeks later, against Philadelphia, Samuel lined out (the New York Times reported Phillie shortstop and future Met coach Cookie Rojas had to jump “about two or three feet” to make the catch) and popped up in two at-bats. He was pinch-hit for by George Altman in the bottom of the ninth. Altman didn’t do any better, striking out. Then John Stephenson struck out. Every Met who batted made out. That was June 21, Jim Bunning’s perfect game. It kind of took the edge off Samuel’s June 20. As Centerfield Maz noted recently, Sammy collected three hits the day before Bunning cooled him off.

For a guy who played in only 53 Mets games total, Amado Samuel was a part of more weirdness than most men experience in a lifetime. Upon coming across his name in Wulf’s 23-year-old Sports Illustrated article, I wondered if there was more Sammy’s Met tenure than Gumplike accidental tourism. So I asked Joe Dubin what he remembered about Samuel. Joe’s been watching the Mets since there were Mets and he seems to have seen everything that I missed.

“I remember having high expectations for him as a Met,” Joe kindly told me. “But for me, that feeling applied to every new player we got. I immediately envisioned Sammy as a potential superstar as I did every other player we obtained. When I was a kid growing up as a New Breeder, everything was seen through rose-colored glasses.”

That’s funny, I thought. I viewed Teddy Martinez the same way. And Frank Taveras. And Rafael Santana. And Jose Vizcaino. And Jose Reyes. Wilson Valdez…not so much. But there’s still time.

I appreciated Joe’s recollection, but still I wondered. I flipped through Bill Ryczek’s essential early-Mets history and learned only that Amado Samuel was, come 1965, part of “probably the sorriest Triple A club in baseball”. For the record, the ’65 Bisons, chock full of discarded ’62-’64 Mets, went 51-96, placed eighth of eight and finished a distant 34½ games out of first. They were even worse than the notoriously bad Bisons of 2009 (a league-worst 56-87 despite being stocked with so many past and future Mets).

The only 1964 Mets yearbook I have is a revised edition, an edition out of which Sammy Samuel was revised right out of once he was demoted to Buffalo. The only 1964 program I have offers no biographical information either, but the scorecard portion offers a happy recap. Thanks to whoever filled it on May 13, I can tell the Mets beat the Milwaukee Braves 5-2, that Jack Fisher beat Tony Cloninger and that Samuel, wore 7, batted eighth, flied out to right, grounded to short, grounded to the pitcher and grounded to third (5, unassisted). I also learned from an advertisement accompanying the scorecard portion of the program that for a Grouchy Stomach or a Nervous Tension Headache, I should take Bromo Seltzer. I suppose with the Mets in the midst of a 53-109 season, the Bromo Seltzer people figured Mets fans were a prime target audience for their product.

Still, nothing much on Samuel. I checked next with Jason. I asked him to pluck Sammy’s 1964 card from The Holy Books and let me know what it said on the back. After declaring it “Strangest. Request. Ever.” he dutifully reported that Topps dutifully reported, “The Mets acquired Amado from the Braves in late ’63. The youngster jumped from Class D to Triple A before coming to the majors in ’62.”

There was also a trivia question regarding the holder of the Giants’ record for hits in one year. Then as now, the answer is Bill Terry.

Before getting completely off track, I discovered the SABR Biography Project had not long ago profiled one Amado Samuel, a.k.a. our Sammy. According to Malcolm Allen’s comprehensive research, major league shortstops have continued to come out of the Dominican Republican at a rapid rate in the two-plus decades since Steve Wulf visited San Pedro de Macoris. By 2007, more than a hundred had taken a turn at the position. And during the games of September 24, 2005, Allen writes, fourteen different Dominicans trotted out to short (including Reyes and his opposite number that night, Cristian Guzman of the Nationals). The author confirmed what Wulf asserted in 1987, that Samuel was indeed the “first Dominican major leaguer to primarily play shortstop, as well as the first big leaguer from San Pedro”.

Allen does a magnificent job of following Samuel’s entire life — which, at age 71 is still going strong in Louisville — including his sale by the Mets back to the Braves after the ’65 season. Samuel needed to be moved out of the organization to make room for a younger shortstop…a fellow by the name of Bud Harrelson.

Thus, in a way, Sammy Samuel is connected to both World Champion New York Met shortstops. His departure created space for Buddy and, regarding his countryman Ralphie, he told Wulf in 1987, “I’ll go to a game in Cincinnati once in a while…but the Mets are still my team. I like the shortstop with the Mets, Santana. He’s pretty good.”

Twenty-three years ago, a retired baseball player who most everybody had forgotten about — and who hadn’t been a Met for twenty-three years to that point — pledged allegiance to the team that let him go and offered an elegant benediction to the unassuming player who followed twice in his footsteps: as a Dominican major league shortstop and as a New York Met shortstop. So it turns out Kathy Ireland in a Mets cap wasn’t the most beautiful thing Sports Illustrated featured in that Swimsuit Issue after all.

Thanks to the blog Condition Poor for unwittingly lending us the image of the 1964 Topps Amado Samuel card.

Please join Frank Messina and me on Tuesday, February 16, 6:00 PM, at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village for a night of Mets Poetry & Prose. Details here, directions here.